A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad

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Title: A Personal Record

Author: Joseph Conrad

Release Date: January 9, 2006 [EBook #687]
Last Updated: November 17, 2012

Language: English

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Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger

A PERSONAL RECORD

By Joseph Conrad

Contents

A
FAMILIAR

PREFACE

A
PERSONAL

RECORD

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

A FAMILIAR PREFACE

As a general rule we do not want much encouragement to talk about ourselves; yet this little book is the result of a friendly

suggestion, and even of a little friendly pressure. I defended myself with some spirit; but, with characteristic tenacity, the friendly voice
insisted, "You know, you really must."

It was not an argument, but I submitted at once. If one must! . . .
You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word.

The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense. I don't say this by way of disparagement. It is better for
mankind to be impressionable than reflective. Nothing humanely great—great, I mean, as affecting a whole mass of lives—has come
from reflection. On the other hand, you cannot fail to see the power of mere words; such words as Glory, for instance, or Pity. I won't
mention any more. They are not far to seek. Shouted with perseverance, with ardour, with conviction, these two by their sound alone
have set whole nations in motion and upheaved the dry, hard ground on which rests our whole social fabric. There's "virtue" for you if
you like! . . . Of course the accent must be attended to. The right accent. That's very important. The capacious lung, the thundering or
the tender vocal chords. Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever.

He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for

engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.

What a dream for a writer! Because written words have their accent, too. Yes! Let me only find the right word! Surely it must be

lying somewhere among the wreckage of all the plaints and all the exultations poured out aloud since the first day when hope, the
undying, came down on earth. It may be there, close by, disregarded, invisible, quite at hand. But it's no good. I believe there are men
who can lay hold of a needle in a pottle of hay at the first try. For myself, I have never had such luck. And then there is that accent.
Another difficulty. For who is going to tell whether the accent is right or wrong till the word is shouted, and fails to be heard, perhaps,
and goes down-wind, leaving the world unmoved? Once upon a time there lived an emperor who was a sage and something of a
literary man. He jotted down on ivory tablets thoughts, maxims, reflections which chance has preserved for the edification of posterity.
Among other sayings—I am quoting from memory—I remember this solemn admonition: "Let all thy words have the accent of heroic
truth." The accent of heroic truth! This is very fine, but I am thinking that it is an easy matter for an austere emperor to jot down
grandiose advice. Most of the working truths on this earth are humble, not heroic; and there have been times in the history of mankind
when the accents of heroic truth have moved it to nothing but derision.

Nobody will expect to find between the covers of this little book words of extraordinary potency or accents of irresistible heroism.

However humiliating for my self esteem, I must confess that the counsels of Marcus Aurelius are not for me. They are more fit for a
moralist than for an artist. Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praise worthy sincerity which,
while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends.

"Embroil" is perhaps too strong an expression. I can't imagine among either my enemies or my friends a being so hard up for

something to do as to quarrel with me. "To disappoint one's friends" would be nearer the mark. Most, almost all, friend ships of the
writing period of my life have come to me through my books; and I know that a novelist lives in his work. He stands there, the only
reality in an invented world, among imaginary things, happenings, and people. Writing about them, he is only writing about himself. But
the disclosure is not complete. He remains, to a certain extent, a figure behind the veil; a suspected rather than a seen presence—a
movement and a voice behind the draperies of fiction. In these personal notes there is no such veil. And I cannot help thinking of a
passage in the "Imitation of Christ" where the ascetic author, who knew life so profoundly, says that "there are persons esteemed on
their reputation who by showing themselves destroy the opinion one had of them." This is the danger incurred by an author of fiction
who sets out to talk about himself without disguise.

While these reminiscent pages were appearing serially I was remonstrated with for bad economy; as if such writing were a form of

self-indulgence wasting the substance of future volumes. It seems that I am not sufficiently literary. Indeed, a man who never wrote a
line for print till he was thirty-six cannot bring himself to look upon his existence and his experience, upon the sum of his thoughts,
sensations, and emotions, upon his memories and his regrets, and the whole possession of his past, as only so much material for his
hands. Once before, some three years ago, when I published "The Mirror of the Sea," a volume of impressions and memories, the
same remarks were made to me. Practical remarks. But, truth to say, I have never understood the kind of thrift they recommend. I
wanted to pay my tribute to the sea, its ships and its men, to whom I remain indebted for so much which has gone to make me what I
am. That seemed to me the only shape in which I could offer it to their shades. There could not be a question in my mind of anything
else. It is quite possible that I am a bad economist; but it is certain that I am incorrigible.

Having matured in the surroundings and under the special conditions of sea life, I have a special piety toward that form of my past;

for its impressions were vivid, its appeal direct, its demands such as could be responded to with the natural elation of youth and
strength equal to the call. There was nothing in them to perplex a young conscience. Having broken away from my origins under a
storm of blame from every quarter which had the merest shadow of right to voice an opinion, removed by great distances from such
natural affections as were still left to me, and even estranged, in a measure, from them by the totally unintelligible character of the life
which had seduced me so mysteriously from my allegiance, I may safely say that through the blind force of circumstances the sea was
to be all my world and the merchant service my only home for a long succession of years. No wonder, then, that in my two exclusively
sea books—"The Nigger of the Narcissus," and "The Mirror of the Sea" (and in the few short sea stories like "Youth" and "Typhoon")
—I have tried with an almost filial regard to render the vibration of life in the great world of waters, in the hearts of the simple men who
have for ages traversed its solitudes, and also that something sentient which seems to dwell in ships—the creatures of their hands and
the objects of their care.

One's literary life must turn frequently for sustenance to memories and seek discourse with the shades, unless one has made up one's

mind to write only in order to reprove mankind for what it is, or praise it for what it is not, or—generally—to teach it how to behave.
Being neither quarrelsome, nor a flatterer, nor a sage, I have done none of these things, and I am prepared to put up serenely with the
insignificance which attaches to persons who are not meddlesome in some way or other. But resignation is not indifference. I would not

like to be left standing as a mere spectator on the bank of the great stream carrying onward so many lives. I would fain claim for myself
the faculty of so much insight as can be expressed in a voice of sympathy and compassion.

It seems to me that in one, at least, authoritative quarter of criticism I am suspected of a certain unemotional, grim acceptance of

facts—of what the French would call secheresse du coeur. Fifteen years of unbroken silence before praise or blame testify sufficiently
to my respect for criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters. But this is more of a personal matter,
reaching the man behind the work, and therefore it may be alluded to in a volume which is a personal note in the margin of the public
page. Not that I feel hurt in the least. The charge—if it amounted to a charge at all—was made in the most considerate terms; in a tone
of regret.

My answer is that if it be true that every novel contains an element of autobiography—and this can hardly be denied, since the

creator can only express himself in his creation—then there are some of us to whom an open display of sentiment is repugnant.

I would not unduly praise the virtue of restraint. It is often merely temperamental. But it is not always a sign of coldness. It may be

pride. There can be nothing more humiliating than to see the shaft of one's emotion miss the mark of either laughter or tears. Nothing
more humiliating! And this for the reason that should the mark be missed, should the open display of emotion fail to move, then it must
perish unavoidably in disgust or contempt. No artist can be reproached for shrinking from a risk which only fools run to meet and only
genius dare confront with impunity. In a task which mainly consists in laying one's soul more or less bare to the world, a regard for
decency, even at the cost of success, is but the regard for one's own dignity which is inseparably united with the dignity of one's work.

And then—it is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this earth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself a

face of pain; and some of our griefs (some only, not all, for it is the capacity for suffering which makes man August in the eyes of men)
have their source in weaknesses which must be recognized with smiling com passion as the common inheritance of us all. Joy and
sorrow in this world pass into each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilight of life as mysterious as an over
shadowed ocean, while the dazzling brightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on the distant edge of the horizon.

Yes! I, too, would like to hold the magic wand giving that command over laughter and tears which is declared to be the highest

achievement of imaginative literature. Only, to be a great magician one must surrender oneself to occult and irresponsible powers,
either outside or within one's breast. We have all heard of simple men selling their souls for love or power to some grotesque devil. The
most ordinary intelligence can perceive without much reflection that anything of the sort is bound to be a fool's bargain. I don't lay claim
to particular wisdom because of my dislike and distrust of such transactions. It may be my sea training acting upon a natural disposition
to keep good hold on the one thing really mine, but the fact is that I have a positive horror of losing even for one moving moment that
full possession of my self which is the first condition of good service. And I have carried my notion of good service from my earlier into
my later existence. I, who have never sought in the written word anything else but a form of the Beautiful—I have carried over that
article of creed from the decks of ships to the more circumscribed space of my desk, and by that act, I suppose, I have become
permanently imperfect in the eyes of the ineffable company of pure esthetes.

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and by the consistent

narrowness of his outlook. But I have never been able to love what was not lovable or hate what was not hateful out of deference for
some general principle. Whether there be any courage in making this admission I know not. After the middle turn of life's way we
consider dangers and joys with a tranquil mind. So I proceed in peace to declare that I have always suspected in the effort to bring into
play the extremities of emotions the debasing touch of insincerity. In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves
to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility—innocently enough, perhaps, and of necessity, like an actor who
raises his voice on the stage above the pitch of natural conversation—but still we have to do that. And surely this is no great sin. But
the danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to
despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose—as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From
laughter and tears the descent is easy to snivelling and giggles.

These may seem selfish considerations; but you can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his

clear duty. And least of all can you condemn an artist pursuing, however humbly and imperfectly, a creative aim. In that interior world
where his thought and his emotions go seeking for the experience of imagined adventures, there are no policemen, no law, no pressure
of circumstance or dread of opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to say Nay to his temptations if not his conscience?

And besides—this, remember, is the place and the moment of perfectly open talk—I think that all ambitions are lawful except those

which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectual and artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even
beyond the limit of prudent sanity. They can hurt no one. If they are mad, then so much the worse for the artist. Indeed, as virtue is said
to be, such ambitions are their own reward. Is it such a very mad presumption to believe in the sovereign power of one's art, to try for
other means, for other ways of affirming this belief in the deeper appeal of one's work? To try to go deeper is not to be insensible. A
historian of hearts is not a historian of emotions, yet he penetrates further, restrained as he may be, since his aim is to reach the very
fount of laughter and tears. The sight of human affairs deserves admiration and pity. They are worthy of respect, too. And he is not
insensible who pays them the undemonstrative tribute of a sigh which is not a sob, and of a smile which is not a grin. Resignation, not
mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is
impossible to become a sham.

Not that I think resignation the last word of wisdom. I am too much the creature of my time for that. But I think that the proper

wisdom is to will what the gods will without, perhaps, being certain what their will is—or even if they have a will of their own. And in
this matter of life and art it is not the Why that matters so much to our happiness as the How. As the Frenchman said, "Il y a toujours
la maniere." Very true. Yes. There is the manner. The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in indignations and enthusiasms, in
judgments—and even in love. The manner in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner truth is foreshadowed
for those who know how to look at their kind.

Those who read me know my conviction that the world, the temporal world, rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they

must be as old as the hills. It rests notably, among others, on the idea of Fidelity. At a time when nothing which is not revolutionary in

some way or other can expect to attract much attention I have not been revolutionary in my writings. The revolutionary spirit is mighty
convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard, absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace
of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher.

All claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and danger from which a philosophical mind should be free. . . .
I fear that trying to be conversational I have only managed to be unduly discursive. I have never been very well acquainted with the

art of conversation—that art which, I understand, is supposed to be lost now. My young days, the days when one's habits and
character are formed, have been rather familiar with long silences. Such voices as broke into them were anything but conversational.
No. I haven't got the habit. Yet this discursiveness is not so irrelevant to the handful of pages which follow. They, too, have been
charged with discursiveness, with disregard of chronological order (which is in itself a crime), with unconventionality of form (which is
an impropriety). I was told severely that the public would view with displeasure the informal character of my recollections. "Alas!" I
protested, mildly. "Could I begin with the sacramental words, 'I was born on such a date in such a place'? The remoteness of the
locality would have robbed the statement of all interest. I haven't lived through wonderful adventures to be related seriatim. I haven't
known distinguished men on whom I could pass fatuous remarks. I haven't been mixed up with great or scandalous affairs. This is but a
bit of psychological document, and even so, I haven't written it with a view to put forward any conclusion of my own."

But my objector was not placated. These were good reasons for not writing at all—not a defense of what stood written already, he

said.

I admit that almost anything, anything in the world, would serve as a good reason for not writing at all. But since I have written them,

all I want to say in their defense is that these memories put down without any regard for established conventions have not been thrown
off without system and purpose. They have their hope and their aim. The hope that from the reading of these pages there may emerge
at last the vision of a personality; the man behind the books so fundamentally dissimilar as, for instance, "Almayer's Folly" and "The
Secret Agent," and yet a coherent, justifiable personality both in its origin and in its action. This is the hope. The immediate aim, closely
associated with the hope, is to give the record of personal memories by presenting faithfully the feelings and sensations connected with
the writing of my first book and with my first contact with the sea.

In the purposely mingled resonance of this double strain a friend here and there will perhaps detect a subtle accord.
J. C. K.

A PERSONAL RECORD

I

Books may be written in all sorts of places. Verbal inspiration may enter the berth of a mariner on board a ship frozen fast in a river

in the middle of a town; and since saints are supposed to look benignantly on humble believers, I indulge in the pleasant fancy that the
shade of old Flaubert—who imagined himself to be (among other things) a descendant of Vikings—might have hovered with amused
interest over the docks of a 2,000-ton steamer called the Adowa, on board of which, gripped by the inclement winter alongside a quay
in Rouen, the tenth chapter of "Almayer's Folly" was begun. With interest, I say, for was not the kind Norman giant with enormous
mustaches and a thundering voice the last of the Romantics? Was he not, in his unworldly, almost ascetic, devotion to his art, a sort of
literary, saint-like hermit?

"'It has set at last,' said Nina to her mother, pointing to the hills behind which the sun had sunk." . . . These words of Almayer's

romantic daughter I remember tracing on the gray paper of a pad which rested on the blanket of my bed-place. They referred to a
sunset in Malayan Isles and shaped themselves in my mind, in a hallucinated vision of forests and rivers and seas, far removed from a
commercial and yet romantic town of the northern hemisphere. But at that moment the mood of visions and words was cut short by the
third officer, a cheerful and casual youth, coming in with a bang of the door and the exclamation: "You've made it jolly warm in here."

It was warm. I had turned on the steam heater after placing a tin under the leaky water-cock—for perhaps you do not know that

water will leak where steam will not. I am not aware of what my young friend had been doing on deck all that morning, but the hands
he rubbed together vigorously were very red and imparted to me a chilly feeling by their mere aspect. He has remained the only
banjoist of my acquaintance, and being also a younger son of a retired colonel, the poem of Mr. Kipling, by a strange aberration of
associated ideas, always seems to me to have been written with an exclusive view to his person. When he did not play the banjo he
loved to sit and look at it. He proceeded to this sentimental inspection, and after meditating a while over the strings under my silent
scrutiny inquired, airily:

"What are you always scribbling there, if it's fair to ask?"
It was a fair enough question, but I did not answer him, and simply turned the pad over with a movement of instinctive secrecy: I

could not have told him he had put to flight the psychology of Nina Almayer, her opening speech of the tenth chapter, and the words of
Mrs. Almayer's wisdom which were to follow in the ominous oncoming of a tropical night. I could not have told him that Nina had said,
"It has set at last." He would have been extremely surprised and perhaps have dropped his precious banjo. Neither could I have told
him that the sun of my sea-going was setting, too, even as I wrote the words expressing the impatience of passionate youth bent on its

desire. I did not know this myself, and it is safe to say he would not have cared, though he was an excellent young fellow and treated
me with more deference than, in our relative positions, I was strictly entitled to.

He lowered a tender gaze on his banjo, and I went on looking through the port-hole. The round opening framed in its brass rim a

fragment of the quays, with a row of casks ranged on the frozen ground and the tail end of a great cart. A red-nosed carter in a blouse
and a woollen night-cap leaned against the wheel. An idle, strolling custom house guard, belted over his blue capote, had the air of
being depressed by exposure to the weather and the monotony of official existence. The background of grimy houses found a place in
the picture framed by my port-hole, across a wide stretch of paved quay brown with frozen mud. The colouring was sombre, and the
most conspicuous feature was a little cafe with curtained windows and a shabby front of white woodwork, corresponding with the
squalor of these poorer quarters bordering the river. We had been shifted down there from another berth in the neighbourhood of the
Opera House, where that same port-hole gave me a view of quite another soft of cafe—the best in the town, I believe, and the very
one where the worthy Bovary and his wife, the romantic daughter of old Pere Renault, had some refreshment after the memorable
performance of an opera which was the tragic story of Lucia di Lammermoor in a setting of light music.

I could recall no more the hallucination of the Eastern Archipelago which I certainly hoped to see again. The story of "Almayer's

Folly" got put away under the pillow for that day. I do not know that I had any occupation to keep me away from it; the truth of the
matter is that on board that ship we were leading just then a contemplative life. I will not say anything of my privileged position. I was
there "just to oblige," as an actor of standing may take a small part in the benefit performance of a friend.

As far as my feelings were concerned I did not wish to be in that steamer at that time and in those circumstances. And perhaps I

was not even wanted there in the usual sense in which a ship "wants" an officer. It was the first and last instance in my sea life when I
served ship-owners who have remained completely shadowy to my apprehension. I do not mean this for the well-known firm of
London ship-brokers which had chartered the ship to the, I will not say short-lived, but ephemeral Franco-Canadian Transport
Company. A death leaves something behind, but there was never anything tangible left from the F. C. T. C. It flourished no longer than
roses live, and unlike the roses it blossomed in the dead of winter, emitted a sort of faint perfume of adventure, and died before spring
set in. But indubitably it was a company, it had even a house-flag, all white with the letters F. C. T. C. artfully tangled up in a
complicated monogram. We flew it at our mainmast head, and now I have come to the conclusion that it was the only flag of its kind in
existence. All the same we on board, for many days, had the impression of being a unit of a large fleet with fortnightly departures for
Montreal and Quebec as advertised in pamphlets and prospectuses which came aboard in a large package in Victoria Dock, London,
just before we started for Rouen, France. And in the shadowy life of the F. C. T. C. lies the secret of that, my last employment in my
calling, which in a remote sense interrupted the rhythmical development of Nina Almayer's story.

The then secretary of the London Shipmasters' Society, with its modest rooms in Fenchurch Street, was a man of indefatigable

activity and the greatest devotion to his task. He is responsible for what was my last association with a ship. I call it that be cause it can
hardly be called a sea-going experience. Dear Captain Froud—it is impossible not to pay him the tribute of affectionate familiarity at
this distance of years—had very sound views as to the advancement of knowledge and status for the whole body of the officers of the
mercantile marine. He organized for us courses of professional lectures, St. John ambulance classes, corresponded industriously with
public bodies and members of Parliament on subjects touching the interests of the service; and as to the oncoming of some inquiry or
commission relating to matters of the sea and to the work of seamen, it was a perfect godsend to his need of exerting himself on our
corporate behalf. Together with this high sense of his official duties he had in him a vein of personal kindness, a strong disposition to do
what good he could to the individual members of that craft of which in his time he had been a very excellent master. And what greater
kindness can one do to a seaman than to put him in the way of employment? Captain Froud did not see why the Shipmasters' Society,
besides its general guardianship of our interests, should not be unofficially an employment agency of the very highest class.

"I am trying to persuade all our great ship-owning firms to come to us for their men. There is nothing of a trade-union spirit about

our society, and I really don't see why they should not," he said once to me. "I am always telling the captains, too, that, all things being
equal, they ought to give preference to the members of the society. In my position I can generally find for them what they want among
our members or our associate members."

In my wanderings about London from west to east and back again (I was very idle then) the two little rooms in Fenchurch Street

were a sort of resting-place where my spirit, hankering after the sea, could feel itself nearer to the ships, the men, and the life of its
choice—nearer there than on any other spot of the solid earth. This resting-place used to be, at about five o'clock in the afternoon, full
of men and tobacco smoke, but Captain Froud had the smaller room to himself and there he granted private interviews, whose
principal motive was to render service. Thus, one murky November afternoon he beckoned me in with a crooked finger and that
peculiar glance above his spectacles which is perhaps my strongest physical recollection of the man.

"I have had in here a shipmaster, this morning," he said, getting back to his desk and motioning me to a chair, "who is in want of an

officer. It's for a steamship. You know, nothing pleases me more than to be asked, but, unfortunately, I do not quite see my way . . ."

As the outer room was full of men I cast a wondering glance at the closed door; but he shook his head.
"Oh, yes, I should be only too glad to get that berth for one of them. But the fact of the matter is, the captain of that ship wants an

officer who can speak French fluently, and that's not so easy to find. I do not know anybody myself but you. It's a second officer's
berth and, of course, you would not care . . . would you now? I know that it isn't what you are looking for."

It was not. I had given myself up to the idleness of a haunted man who looks for nothing but words wherein to capture his visions.

But I admit that outwardly I resembled sufficiently a man who could make a second officer for a steamer chartered by a French
company. I showed no sign of being haunted by the fate of Nina and by the murmurs of tropical forests; and even my intimate
intercourse with Almayer (a person of weak character) had not put a visible mark upon my features. For many years he and the world
of his story had been the companions of my imagination without, I hope, impairing my ability to deal with the realities of sea life. I had
had the man and his surroundings with me ever since my return from the eastern waters—some four years before the day of which I
speak.

It was in the front sitting-room of furnished apartments in a Pimlico square that they first began to live again with a vividness and

poignancy quite foreign to our former real intercourse. I had been treating myself to a long stay on shore, and in the necessity of
occupying my mornings Almayer (that old acquaintance) came nobly to the rescue.

Before long, as was only proper, his wife and daughter joined him round my table, and then the rest of that Pantai band came full of

words and gestures. Unknown to my respectable landlady, it was my practice directly after my breakfast to hold animated receptions
of Malays, Arabs, and half-castes. They did not clamour aloud for my attention. They came with a silent and irresistible appeal—and
the appeal, I affirm here, was not to my self-love or my vanity. It seems now to have had a moral character, for why should the
memory of these beings, seen in their obscure, sun-bathed existence, demand to express itself in the shape of a novel, except on the
ground of that mysterious fellowship which unites in a community of hopes and fears all the dwellers on this earth?

I did not receive my visitors with boisterous rapture as the bearers of any gifts of profit or fame. There was no vision of a printed

book before me as I sat writing at that table, situated in a decayed part of Belgravia. After all these years, each leaving its evidence of
slowly blackened pages, I can honestly say that it is a sentiment akin to pity which prompted me to render in words assembled with
conscientious care the memory of things far distant and of men who had lived.

But, coming back to Captain Froud and his fixed idea of never disappointing ship owners or ship-captains, it was not likely that I

should fail him in his ambition—to satisfy at a few hours' notice the unusual demand for a French-speaking officer. He explained to me
that the ship was chartered by a French company intending to establish a regular monthly line of sailings from Rouen, for the transport
of French emigrants to Canada. But, frankly, this sort of thing did not interest me very much. I said gravely that if it were really a matter
of keeping up the reputation of the Shipmasters' Society I would consider it. But the consideration was just for form's sake. The next
day I interviewed the captain, and I believe we were impressed favourably with each other. He explained that his chief mate was an
excellent man in every respect and that he could not think of dismissing him so as to give me the higher position; but that if I consented
to come as second officer I would be given certain special advantages—and so on.

I told him that if I came at all the rank really did not matter.
"I am sure," he insisted, "you will get on first rate with Mr. Paramor."
I promised faithfully to stay for two trips at least, and it was in those circumstances that what was to be my last connection with a

ship began. And after all there was not even one single trip. It may be that it was simply the fulfilment of a fate, of that written word on
my forehead which apparently for bade me, through all my sea wanderings, ever to achieve the crossing of the Western Ocean—using
the words in that special sense in which sailors speak of Western Ocean trade, of Western Ocean packets, of Western Ocean hard
cases. The new life attended closely upon the old, and the nine chapters of "Almayer's Folly" went with me to the Victoria Dock,
whence in a few days we started for Rouen. I won't go so far as saying that the engaging of a man fated never to cross the Western
Ocean was the absolute cause of the Franco-Canadian Transport Company's failure to achieve even a single passage. It might have
been that of course; but the obvious, gross obstacle was clearly the want of money. Four hundred and sixty bunks for emigrants were
put together in the 'tween decks by industrious carpenters while we lay in the Victoria Dock, but never an emigrant turned up in Rouen
—of which, being a humane person, I confess I was glad. Some gentlemen from Paris—I think there were three of them, and one was
said to be the chairman—turned up, indeed, and went from end to end of the ship, knocking their silk hats cruelly against the deck
beams. I attended them personally, and I can vouch for it that the interest they took in things was intelligent enough, though, obviously,
they had never seen anything of the sort before. Their faces as they went ashore wore a cheerfully inconclusive expression.
Notwithstanding that this inspecting ceremony was supposed to be a preliminary to immediate sailing, it was then, as they filed down
our gangway, that I received the inward monition that no sailing within the meaning of our charter party would ever take place.

It must be said that in less than three weeks a move took place. When we first arrived we had been taken up with much ceremony

well toward the centre of the town, and, all the street corners being placarded with the tricolor posters announcing the birth of our
company, the petit bourgeois with his wife and family made a Sunday holiday from the inspection of the ship. I was always in evidence
in my best uniform to give information as though I had been a Cook's tourists' interpreter, while our quartermasters reaped a harvest of
small change from personally conducted parties. But when the move was made—that move which carried us some mile and a half
down the stream to be tied up to an altogether muddier and shabbier quay—then indeed the desolation of solitude became our lot. It
was a complete and soundless stagnation; for as we had the ship ready for sea to the smallest detail, as the frost was hard and the days
short, we were absolutely idle—idle to the point of blushing with shame when the thought struck us that all the time our salaries went
on. Young Cole was aggrieved because, as he said, we could not enjoy any sort of fun in the evening after loafing like this all day; even
the banjo lost its charm since there was nothing to prevent his strumming on it all the time between the meals. The good Paramor—he
was really a most excellent fellow—became unhappy as far as was possible to his cheery nature, till one dreary day I suggested, out of
sheer mischief, that he should employ the dormant energies of the crew in hauling both cables up on deck and turning them end for end.

For a moment Mr. Paramor was radiant. "Excellent idea!" but directly his face fell. "Why . . . Yes! But we can't make that job last

more than three days," he muttered, discontentedly. I don't know how long he expected us to be stuck on the riverside outskirts of
Rouen, but I know that the cables got hauled up and turned end for end according to my satanic suggestion, put down again, and their
very existence utterly forgotten, I believe, before a French river pilot came on board to take our ship down, empty as she came, into
the Havre roads. You may think that this state of forced idleness favoured some advance in the fortunes of Almayer and his daughter.
Yet it was not so. As if it were some sort of evil spell, my banjoist cabin mate's interruption, as related above, had arrested them short
at the point of that fateful sunset for many weeks together. It was always thus with this book, begun in '89 and finished in '94—with
that shortest of all the novels which it was to be my lot to write. Between its opening exclamation calling Almayer to his dinner in his
wife's voice and Abdullah's (his enemy) mental reference to the God of Islam—"The Merciful, the Compassionate"—which closes the
book, there were to come several long sea passages, a visit (to use the elevated phraseology suitable to the occasion) to the scenes
(some of them) of my childhood and the realization of childhood's vain words, expressing a light-hearted and romantic whim.

It was in 1868, when nine years old or thereabouts, that while looking at a map of Africa of the time and putting my finger on the

blank space then representing the unsolved mystery of that continent, I said to myself, with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity
which are no longer in my character now:

"When I grow up I shall go there."
And of course I thought no more about it till after a quarter of a century or so an opportunity offered to go there—as if the sin of

childish audacity were to be visited on my mature head. Yes. I did go there: there being the region of Stanley Falls, which in '68 was
the blankest of blank spaces on the earth's figured surface. And the MS. of "Almayer's Folly," carried about me as if it were a talisman
or a treasure, went there, too. That it ever came out of there seems a special dispensation of Providence, because a good many of my
other properties, infinitely more valuable and useful to me, remained behind through unfortunate accidents of transportation. I call to
mind, for instance, a specially awkward turn of the Congo between Kinchassa and Leopoldsville—more particularly when one had to
take it at night in a big canoe with only half the proper number of paddlers. I failed in being the second white man on record drowned
at that interesting spot through the upsetting of a canoe. The first was a young Belgian officer, but the accident happened some months
before my time, and he, too, I believe, was going home; not perhaps quite so ill as myself—but still he was going home. I got round the
turn more or less alive, though I was too sick to care whether I did or not, and, always with "Almayer's Folly" among my diminishing
baggage, I arrived at that delectable capital, Boma, where, before the departure of the steamer which was to take me home, I had the
time to wish myself dead over and over again with perfect sincerity. At that date there were in existence only seven chapters of
"Almayer's Folly," but the chapter in my history which followed was that of a long, long illness and very dismal convalescence. Geneva,
or more precisely the hydropathic establishment of Champel, is rendered forever famous by the termination of the eighth chapter in the
history of Almayer's decline and fall. The events of the ninth are inextricably mixed up with the details of the proper management of a
waterside warehouse owned by a certain city firm whose name does not matter. But that work, undertaken to accustom myself again
to the activities of a healthy existence, soon came to an end. The earth had nothing to hold me with for very long. And then that
memorable story, like a cask of choice Madeira, got carried for three years to and fro upon the sea. Whether this treatment improved
its flavour or not, of course I would not like to say. As far as appearance is concerned it certainly did nothing of the kind. The whole
MS. acquired a faded look and an ancient, yellowish complexion. It became at last unreasonable to suppose that anything in the world
would ever happen to Almayer and Nina. And yet something most unlikely to happen on the high seas was to wake them up from their
state of suspended animation.

What is it that Novalis says: "It is certain my conviction gains infinitely the moment an other soul will believe in it." And what is a

novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and
whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history. Providence which saved my
MS. from the Congo rapids brought it to the knowledge of a helpful soul far out on the open sea. It would be on my part the greatest
ingratitude ever to forget the sallow, sunken face and the deep-set, dark eyes of the young Cambridge man (he was a "passenger for
his health" on board the good ship Torrens outward bound to Australia) who was the first reader of "Almayer's Folly"—the very first
reader I ever had.

"Would it bore you very much in reading a MS. in a handwriting like mine?" I asked him one evening, on a sudden impulse at the

end of a longish conversation whose subject was Gibbon's History.

Jacques (that was his name) was sitting in my cabin one stormy dog-watch below, after bring me a book to read from his own

travelling store.

"Not at all," he answered, with his courteous intonation and a faint smile. As I pulled a drawer open his suddenly aroused curiosity

gave him a watchful expression. I wonder what he expected to see. A poem, maybe. All that's beyond guessing now.

He was not a cold, but a calm man, still more subdued by disease—a man of few words and of an unassuming modesty in general

intercourse, but with something uncommon in the whole of his person which set him apart from the undistinguished lot of our sixty
passengers. His eyes had a thoughtful, introspective look. In his attractive reserved manner and in a veiled sympathetic voice he asked:

"What is this?" "It is a sort of tale," I answered, with an effort. "It is not even finished yet. Nevertheless, I would like to know what

you think of it." He put the MS. in the breast-pocket of his jacket; I remember perfectly his thin, brown fingers folding it lengthwise. "I
will read it to-morrow," he remarked, seizing the door handle; and then watching the roll of the ship for a propitious moment, he
opened the door and was gone. In the moment of his exit I heard the sustained booming of the wind, the swish of the water on the
decks of the Torrens, and the subdued, as if distant, roar of the rising sea. I noted the growing disquiet in the great restlessness of the
ocean, and responded professionally to it with the thought that at eight o'clock, in another half hour or so at the farthest, the topgallant
sails would have to come off the ship.

Next day, but this time in the first dog watch, Jacques entered my cabin. He had a thick woollen muffler round his throat, and the

MS. was in his hand. He tendered it to me with a steady look, but without a word. I took it in silence. He sat down on the couch and
still said nothing. I opened and shut a drawer under my desk, on which a filled-up log-slate lay wide open in its wooden frame waiting
to be copied neatly into the sort of book I was accustomed to write with care, the ship's log-book. I turned my back squarely on the
desk. And even then Jacques never offered a word. "Well, what do you say?" I asked at last. "Is it worth finishing?" This question
expressed exactly the whole of my thoughts.

"Distinctly," he answered, in his sedate, veiled voice, and then coughed a little.
"Were you interested?" I inquired further, almost in a whisper.
"Very much!"
In a pause I went on meeting instinctively the heavy rolling of the ship, and Jacques put his feet upon the couch. The curtain of my

bed-place swung to and fro as if it were a punkah, the bulkhead lamp circled in its gimbals, and now and then the cabin door rattled
slightly in the gusts of wind. It was in latitude 40 south, and nearly in the longitude of Greenwich, as far as I can remember, that these
quiet rites of Almayer's and Nina's resurrection were taking place. In the prolonged silence it occurred to me that there was a good
deal of retrospective writing in the story as far as it went. Was it intelligible in its action, I asked myself, as if already the story-teller
were being born into the body of a seaman. But I heard on deck the whistle of the officer of the watch and remained on the alert to
catch the order that was to follow this call to attention. It reached me as a faint, fierce shout to "Square the yards." "Aha!" I thought to
myself, "a westerly blow coming on." Then I turned to my very first reader, who, alas! was not to live long enough to know the end of

the tale.

"Now let me ask you one more thing: is the story quite clear to you as it stands?"
He raised his dark, gentle eyes to my face and seemed surprised.
"Yes! Perfectly."
This was all I was to hear from his lips concerning the merits of "Almayer's Folly." We never spoke together of the book again. A

long period of bad weather set in and I had no thoughts left but for my duties, while poor Jacques caught a fatal cold and had to keep
close in his cabin. When we arrived in Adelaide the first reader of my prose went at once up-country, and died rather suddenly in the
end, either in Australia or it may be on the passage while going home through the Suez Canal. I am not sure which it was now, and I do
not think I ever heard precisely; though I made inquiries about him from some of our return passengers who, wandering about to "see
the country" during the ship's stay in port, had come upon him here and there. At last we sailed, homeward bound, and still not one line
was added to the careless scrawl of the many pages which poor Jacques had had the patience to read with the very shadows of
Eternity gathering already in the hollows of his kind, steadfast eyes.

The purpose instilled into me by his simple and final "Distinctly" remained dormant, yet alive to await its opportunity. I dare say I am

compelled—unconsciously compelled—now to write volume after volume, as in past years I was compelled to go to sea voyage after
voyage. Leaves must follow upon one an other as leagues used to follow in the days gone by, on and on to the appointed end, which,
being Truth itself, is One—one for all men and for all occupations.

I do not know which of the two impulses has appeared more mysterious and more wonderful to me. Still, in writing, as in going to

sea, I had to wait my opportunity. Let me confess here that I was never one of those wonderful fellows that would go afloat in a wash-
tub for the sake of the fun, and if I may pride myself upon my consistency, it was ever just the same with my writing. Some men, I have
heard, write in railway carriages, and could do it, perhaps, sitting crossed-legged on a clothes-line; but I must confess that my sybaritic
disposition will not consent to write without something at least resembling a chair. Line by line, rather than page by page, was the
growth of "Almayer's Folly."

And so it happened that I very nearly lost the MS., advanced now to the first words of the ninth chapter, in the Friedrichstrasse

Poland, or more precisely to Ukraine. On an early, sleepy morning changing trains in a hurry I left my Gladstone bag in a refreshment-
room. A worthy and intelligent Koffertrager rescued it. Yet in my anxiety I was not thinking of the MS., but of all the other things that
were packed in the bag.

In Warsaw, where I spent two days, those wandering pages were never exposed to the light, except once to candle-light, while the

bag lay open on the chair. I was dressing hurriedly to dine at a sporting club. A friend of my childhood (he had been in the Diplomatic
Service, but had turned to growing wheat on paternal acres, and we had not seen each other for over twenty years) was sitting on the
hotel sofa waiting to carry me off there.

"You might tell me something of your life while you are dressing," he suggested, kindly.
I do not think I told him much of my life story either then or later. The talk of the select little party with which he made me dine was

extremely animated and embraced most subjects under heaven, from big-game shooting in Africa to the last poem published in a very
modernist review, edited by the very young and patronized by the highest society. But it never touched upon "Almayer's Folly," and
next morning, in uninterrupted obscurity, this inseparable companion went on rolling with me in the southeast direction toward the
government of Kiev.

At that time there was an eight hours' drive, if not more, from the railway station to the country-house which was my destination.
"Dear boy" (these words were always written in English), so ran the last letter from that house received in London—"Get yourself

driven to the only...